Assimilation
by Chikku-Chikku
Summary: When machines replace humans as themselves, will Atom be able to bring back the small spark of humanity still left in him and the older generations of fighting bots? /'Future'-fic, robots-POV,-centric
1. Prologue

**. . .**

**Assimilation **  
><em>Prologue<em>

It was something of a laugh to Atom how easily he could walk into the building without being detected.

He was sure his off-key energy signature would spark the interest of the spiked, rolling wheelchairs guarding Circuit Twenty-Two's local bar. He was sure that his battered deposition—optics broken, armor chipped, bleeding, and mud-stained with oily grease from the outside air—would arouse suspicion from even the rustic, creaking chairs slumped against the doorway. But all the glassy-eyed, tired-looking drones did was scan him over a few times, declaring ridiculous things such as, "Oh, a Generation 2! how unique, how incredible, how wonderfully _rare_!" before ushering him through the door in a mad frenzy. No one bothered to check his registered identity online, or noticed that his eyes were a deep, deep blue, more intelligently, and keenly, aware than theirs—that he was more of a machine, a _humane_ yet unemotional machine, than any one of them.

Their mirrors were located in the bathroom.

Navigating around the bar was even easier than entering, and through the exhaust smoke from the hundreds milling around him and the the smog of narcotic, mind-numbing drugs, Atom reached the bartender in a matter of seconds. He found himself surrounded by cool, yet fleshy metal bodies, and he shivered at the synthetic feel of his robotic 'brethrens', at their false display of human mimic. It was disgusting—he didn't understand how any one of them could actually pretend to be something they were not.

"Did ya need anything?" the 'tender, a one-eyed, blue haired robot, asked him carelessly as he leant across the counter. The sound coming from the robot's vocals was distorted from years of asking the same question, and his movements as he rapidly serviced were odd and jerky.

"Yes—no. Well, maybe; could you direct me to the _bathroom_?" Atom felt a thrill of satisfaction as his usually monotone voice came out as clear and convincing as if he were a programmed Generation Thirty robot.

The one-eyed robot tilted his head slightly, and sparks flew from his slim neck before he nodded and consulted his processor for a mental map, subspaced a sheet of paper and pen from his chest, slowly wrote down the directions—complete with colorful diagrams and figures—and handed it to Atom. There was a stain of dark purple blood on the bottom tip of the paper, and Atom smiled as he gratefully took it, murmured a, "Thank you", and headed towards the back of the building.

But before he left the room, he chanced a glance back at the 'tender and found the poor robot doubled over in pain from his recent mental effort, oil leaking from his lips as his body spasmed and overheated. Atom grimaced in sympathy and annoyance—really, was it so hard to fix defects instead of just keeping them there and throwing them away later? There wasn't a single use to anything Circuit Twenty-Two had, whether it be the clubs, bars, factories, or homes; most were just rejects from larger, more important cities—old generations abandoned the moment they were created because their technology had become obsolete a mere week after it came out.

Atom supposed he was lucky. Lucky that he had been created centuries before machines completely replaced humans as. . . _themselves_.

As the Generation Two robot made his way around the corners and loops of the once sparkling clean building, he paused as the drone of the lobby's television drifted noisily from the next room. He could make out, through the thin walls, the almost perfect human voice of a female blandly reciting the lines from a prescripted news-board, her tone holding just enough solemnity to be convincing:

_". . .We are now approaching another pollution storm around the western middle of Ninety-Six and Ninety-Seven. . . every frontier on dry lands is issued an immediate Level Three Emergency Warning. . . please be cautious of thunderhead clouds and rising acid rain as you go out today. . . for tomorrow's scheduled weather forecast–"_

A frown flitted behind Atom's meshed faceplates as the female's voice was abruptly replaced by a harsher, more authoritative bark from a new robot.

_"For tomorrow's scheduled _weather _forecast—"_ the new cold, male voice spat out mockingly, and the G2 bot had to suppress a disgusted shudder—_"we have just recently received news that two very _infamous_ rogues were found loitering near Circuit Twenty a few days ago. . . nothing strange about that, right?; however, they were seen stealing mirrors from every single room of Twenty's bars and hotels. . . how foolish; they were being quite subtle, were they not?"_

The voice laughed, a loud, grating sound of hatred. _"For the remainder of this month, and only this month, a glorifying prize will be awarded to the 'bot who intercepts these rogues as they—most indubitably—skip to the Twenty's neighboring cities. . . the prize of one, full-grown adult _human_."_

Atom felt a chill creep up his backstruts as the newscaster's voice became drowned out in a sea of crackling exclamations from the adjacent room. He could just imagine the gears clicking with revelation in the processor of every robot in the building; in the drugged minds of the blood-stained wheelchairs outside, who had instantly recognized him as a Generation Two, and in the fritzing processor of the bartender, who was probably reanalyzing his image again in an attempt to match him up online.

_"So, who do you suppose these two are?. . . why, just a decrepit Generation Two and a lowly Generation Three robot, both from the age of rustic organic beings. . ."_

At the sound of those last few words, Atom was already running as fast as he could out of the room and away from the enraptured crowd, their optics intently staring at the flickering screen, not realizing that he was in the same building as them. But by the time he made it through the bathroom door, he could hear the crowd's buzz of revelation as the metallic voice uttered their names—

_"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you. . . the notorious _Atom _and _Zeus_–"_

With mounting panic, Atom slammed the door shut and turned towards the pearly-white, luminescent slabs of glass in front of him. He brought his fist smashing through the mirrors before each stall, the wounds on his knuckles reopening with shredded crystal at each thunderous punch. By the time the wheelchairs remembered him and the 'tender stopped blanking out enough to tell the robots his location, he had already secured all five of the mirrors—

_"Go now and capture them. . . there is so much potential out there for all of us. . . and only they are stopping our nation from its rightful _rise_."_

"Rise, rise, rise!" Atom shouted bitterly, recklessly, as he lifted his body up and through the bathroom's window. He was half-way out, arms gripping tight onto the mirrors, when the mob of robots finally rounded the corner and banged uproariously on the door—

"There is no _rise_ for your humanity," he hissed and, with a final heavy thud, dropped down from the building and into the welcoming envelop of polluted air and warm dirt.

Atom could see the searching lights wildly flashing from every crevice of the city, gifting it with a glow that could outmatch any one of the major southern circuits. He pressed himself against the bar's brick wall, listening to the excited, exasperated murmurs only a few feet away from him. His sharp optics caught a brief movement to the right, as a dark, subtle figure quickly sprinted across the road towards him. Zeus' grim face appeared out of the darkness, mirroring his own despondency.

"Someone caught us; offered prize," the G2 robot informed his tall friend as they met halfway, and traded annoyed glances at one another and the flickering green lights. He switched back to his usual monotone, short-clipped voice, having nothing to hide from Zeus. "A human as the reward. . . unbelievable."

"I've seen them do worse," Zeus said emotionlessly. "Did you get the mirrors?"

"Yeah; get his parts?"

"Right here." The black-hued, once champion of boxing, held up a blood-stained bag in his hands. "Charlie really mutilated him back in 2020. . . it's gonna be hard rewiring him together, and he might not even wake up afterwards."

Atom's optics shuttered dully at the mention of Charlie, and Zeus had the decency to look apologetic. "Be fine–" he finally said, "Need everyone we can get."

"You sure he's worth it?"

The G2 bot's expression grew blank as he opened the top of the huge burlap bag. A glimmer of faded, still rich purple armor shone ardently in the dimness.

"Any one of us still left," Atom murmured as the sirens of their pursuers grazed the air with its loud, echoing promise of destruction, "is worth it."

* * *

><p><em>Tbc.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Geez, I haven't written anything in awhile! 0_0

This was just a spur of the moment kind of thing, and I semi-sorta kind of have an idea where I'm going, but no promises there. This was really fun to write; and even though it's a bit vague and confusing-ish right now, things will be cleared up later on (if I continue). Story mainly revolves around the robots, and not the humans in this fic, plus it's sometime far in the future, so be warned - and yes, they're alive and yes, it shall be -kinda- explained later on. (But here's a hint - remember Atom looking into the mirror in the movie?)

Hope it was enjoyable! (Also, anyone catch the TF and SH references? 8D Also also, will I get murdered if I include -possible- slash?)


	2. One

**. . .**

**Assimilation  
><strong>_One_

The trip to Ōshū in coastal eastern Japan had been his master's goal from the very beginning.

The purpose, Noise knew—as it always was with every one of his previous owners—was admittance into the infamous WRB in North America. Ōshū was the final stop before he was to be shipped back to the Americas and into the ring of the elites; it was to be the place where he would fight his last battle of acclaim in one of the world's most widely recognized arenas—The Underworld Circuit of Iwate. If he won there, his ticket to the WRB was all but sealed.

But on that gloomy, foggy morning in São Paulo, Brazil, as Noise stood in the foyer of a large, seaside villa and watched his owner babble in quick, harsh tones on the phone, he felt an emotion akin to _foreboding_. Something in him was on edge the whole four hours he was mounted in place against the wall, his shipment crate on the ground beside him, ready to be sealed and mailed off to a cottage in Iwate as soon as his master finished with business at home.

The man—a wealthy entrepreneur by the name of Luiz Miguel—was shouting heatedly into the hologram pad, eyes narrowing darker at each biting word; the impatient tap-tap of his twenty-thousand dollar shoes bouncing off the marble walls of the mansion. Noise was surprised that he could understand every syllable the man was spewing out, even though he couldn't remember installing a language translator into his system. . . Nevertheless, he tuned his audios into the conversation with curious, almost intense scrutiny:

_"What do you mean, he has to apply for the preliminaries to get into the _actual_ fight?"_ Luiz was snarling. _"I thought I arranged the deal with Mashido already!. . . _When?_ Two fucking days ago, that's when. . . He was supposed to book me the second match with Shagojoyo in Ōshū tomorrow!. . ._

_"What? He said that he's no recollection of any of it? After we spent hours and hours discussing the details in fine, legible print in his office, inside his business building, right in front of dozens of witnesses? That lying, scum-sucking bastard!. . . No, I'm not. . . I'm not making any of this up!. . . I'm not losing my mind, either, I'm fine—I am; I'm just so fraggin' pissed—_

_". . . Yes, yes, I honest to God did all that legal shit. . . Stamped it and dated it and sealed it and everything. . . I'll show it to you if you want, but seriously, I— _What?_ What did you just say? Care to repeat that to me? because I honestly thought you just told me to _give up_. . ._

_"—Hah, are you fucking serious? Really, give up? You expect me to give up now, after all of this? After I've already packed my bags, about to head out for the plane and everything, you tell me I should just give up all hope?. . . Don't fucking bullshit me, Ellis! I don't care what you have to do, I'm expecting a slot in the match tomorrow, no matter what!"_

The words were eerily familiar, as though he'd heard them some _time_ before; and as Luiz clicked his silver hologram off, whirling on him with murderous, blood-shot eyes, Noise experienced a flash of déjà vu for the first time in his existence.

_"You pile of shit,"_ the Brazilian man whispered, voice so low with fury that it seemed as if he blamed Noise for the entire misunderstanding between him and Mashido. His movements were haphazard and jerky—like the samurai bot knew it would be—as he stormed over to Noise, yanked the recharging cord from his back panel, and roughly pushed him down into the shipment crate. _"Sometimes you're more trouble than you're worth."_ Luiz lifted the wooden cover of the crate over the robot's body, making to conceal his lower half, upper torso, and the whole of his ribbed facemask; soon, only the pointed helm and glowing blue optics would be visible. . .

Noise suddenly knew then; knew it all in a dizzying flash of prescience, as his owner reached forward to secure the cover in place. . .—what would happen to him in the next few weeks.

Once Luiz finished with his shipment in Brazil, he would be nicely wrapped up and conveniently placed on a plane flying to eastern Japan, crate covered with wild stickers and quirky postal stamps. Luiz would have, in his rage and unyielding haste, forgotten the code and verification tag for his identification scan; so when he reached Ōshū, Noise would be carted off to the mechanical lost-and-found lobby, waiting in vain as his owner passed not five feet from his imprisonment, realizing the folly only upon reaching his cottage and discovering nothing there.

And once the day was over and the lights began to dim in the lobby as nighttime ascended, a stranger would approach him from the shadows and retrieve his body from the lost-and found room. The stranger, a man cloaked in dark black with grim, merciless eyes, would take him back to his suite, paint him a deep, rich violet color, insert golden optics into his eye-sockets, and spray-paint expressive _kanji_ characters all over his frame. He would install a brand new, enhanced voice recognition system within his processor, equip him with state-of-the-art armor and weapons, and give him over to the authority of his younger charge.

The boy would then change his designation from _'Noise'_ to _'Noisy Boy'_, enter him into the Underworld Circuit of Iwate under the name _'Hanzo Mashido'_, and ultimately claim title as one of the lead champions of robot boxing. . .

The memory was all there.

The touch and smell and sight of his every thought and action—the rough texture of his knuckles colliding into Shagojoyo's face mere seconds into the match, crushing the warm metal, fracturing it, until nothing was left but a bloody pulp of steel and sparks; the odor of fermenting oil as his opponent slumped forward and bled a thick, viscous pale purple, limbs haggardly ripped apart and flung across the entire arena, his internal wires strung over the stage like macabre Christmas lights on a cold, winter night; the still-life picture of the incredible, enormous crowd, all roaring in either delight or detached interest, their eyes as cruel and vicious and unfeeling as a robot's, yearning for violence, savagery, and bloodshed. . . so very evil. . . so very machine-like. . . so very _inhuman_. . .

_No—_

Noise stood perfectly still, encased in that indifferent, wooden box, wide-eyed with horror and disbelief. The flickers of icy, dreadful emotion inside of him were foreign; and yet, it seem to _belong_ there as time froze in maddening, chaotic place. He could see Luiz's hand still leaning forward, the block of wood reaching to close him off from the world, to seal his fate away as easily as it would seal the box. He could see his master's lips lifting in a sneer, mouth opened to voice more snappy complaints. _"Sometimes you're more trouble than you're worth,"_ Luiz said, his words repeated slowly, coldly. . .

And then he was gone.

The darkness rushed in from everywhere—from the background, from the box, from the ground rising up—and consumed his small pockets of light with its Atramentarious ebony black. His optics widened, not yet the solid hue of gold-and-recessive-blue; and the glimmer of something far and near, deep and unsettling, shook his frame. It shot straight from the eyes, his previous yellow sight edged with dullness as Luiz's face and the mansion began to blur until they became a mesh of kaleidoscopic blobs and dotted lines. The sensation traveled down through his torso, to his legs and arms, and a deep, blooming pain seized hold of his chest and brought his limbs to a numbing state of immobility.

In one frenzied movement, the silence around him began to change shape, each pitch of sound blending into two instead of one. He saw words floating in the air, mixing and forming sentences, the chord of its line once Luiz's, but now flat and nondescript—one speaker monotone and cold, the other careless and airy. There was no sense to their back-and-forth gibberish, only the bleeding of voices into an idle drone; there was nothing there to feel but the sharp prick of an otherworldly presence, probing within him, tearing his insides to shreds, and reassembling it back again once the damage reached a point of no return.

He grunted, he writhed, he shuttered his optics to make the nightmare go away. Nothing made any sense anymore—how could he experience this, if he was a _machine_?; and if he _could_ experience and feel, then why did it have to be so damnably _real_?

The pain was there in all its glory; the agony maddening in its vibrancy; trapping him in an eternal limbo, refusing to let him even move or scream and shout out his misery to the entire world. But he was a _robot_. . . he was Noisy Boy—_Noise—_and he had never thought himself capable of feeling a reaction, especially emotion, towards anything at all. He thought he had always been dead, immune to the organic world surrounding him, immune to human trivialities such as 'pain' and 'fear' and 'horror' and the antagonizing sensation of being—

_"—ALIVE!"_

The probing shuddered to a halt. Noise felt his frame still for a moment, shock numbing his senses until all he registered was that one word, uttered not by him, but by something else. . . something _outside_ of his imprisonment.

The gibberish droning faded into steady cadences, growing louder and more distinct as the source of the noise hovered over his audios, like a bee buzzing around the origin of its excitement as it flits from flower to flower—or in his case, from limb to limb. Syllables clashed into tangible language, the words molded into sentences, into conversation and murmurs of dissection above his head. There was no explanation or understanding of it, no why or what or how, only the presence of something cool and clinical; and, at the same time, grasping and soothing in its brethren comfort. . .

_". . .Actually did it!"_

_"Yeah humhm, what did I tell you? See that flash of light in his optics?  
><em>_I think he's about to gain conscious now!"_

_"Sure it's not just charge from some residue energy?"_

_"Nah; it can't be. His frame's shaking, helm heating, armor smoking up and everything-"_

_"Always been wrong before, even with _your_ reactivation."_

_"Well, doesn't hurt to try, does it?  
>—Why don't you give him a test and see. . ."<em>

There followed a sharp prod to his left, invisible fingers prying into burning, sensitive armor. The act was innocent, armed with only good intentions, but he felt pain; voiced it aloud in a low tremor, and almost at once, the touch ceased. Soft murmurs filled the silence again, the monotone levelness of the speaker putting enough energy in his recently limp appendages to spark them into action.

_"Hear us, Noisy Boy? _Feel_ us?"_

_"Just try to power up your optics and move something. . ."_

Without thinking of the consequences—or even of the possibility of _more_ pain—Noise did as he was told, flickering on his eyes in one swift, nervous movement.

There was a click and a whirl; and it was a second before he realized the sound was coming from inside of _him_, his internal cooling fan whirling to life as his processor lit up in keen awareness. Everything turned blindingly, glaringly red. Noise gasped, the sound coming out in one relieved sigh of air– _'Aeughhh'_. Hands found him, pressing his body firmly down as he jerked up in a violent, pendulant motion. The initial blurriness of the room began to fade away, until his crimson-toned vision dimmed to a pale white, blue, and black.

It took him those first few minutes of shuttering his optics again and again, head twisting back and forth to take in snippets of the bland room—the chipped, crumbling ruin of the wall; the barricade of cracked, crystalline mirrors surrounding him in a circle; the multiple components of blood-stained metal stacked in piles on the ground; the tools and machinery that whirled through the encampment, showers of sparks flying from their sharp-edged weapons—before he brought his eyes heavenward and met the gaze of a blue-eyed, grinning robot. It took him another five minutes to realize that this was _him—_the bot with the strangely comforting, monotone voice.

Noise opened his mouth to speak, to express an acknowledgement, a greeting, _anything_, to the calm-looking machine in front of him; but the all too familiar sensation of his ribbed facemask stopped him dead. He brought his optics downward and caught the glint of deep purple armor reflecting back. Without having to look, he knew his optics must be a brilliant, lively gold; that his body must be framed in beautiful, unintelligible _kanji_.

"I—" the samurai bot murmured. The hands holding him down were gone, and the freedom to move was overwhelming. He finally noticed that he was no longer inside the crate. That he had never been in the crate from the beginning.

"I. . . I don't understand-" Noise tried again, his vocals breaking. The dizzying sense of reality was too strong to comprehend; his arms remained rigid beside his side as he laid there, unsure and confused. "Here. . . I'm _here_. . . But _how?_"

"How not?" the monotone robot answered him wryly, and he leaned down to pat Noise's arm. "Don't worry. Reality, not fantasy. Here now, not _there_." Surprising him, the robot reached down to grasp his hand, bringing it right up in front of Noise's face with only a wicked grin for an explanation. "See?" He slapped Noise's faceplates with the limp appendage. "Feel?" He opened his mouth and whistled a soft, low tune. "Hear?"

Slowly, the smile on his face faded, humor disappearing from his expression as he dropped Noise's hand back to its side. Metal met metal with a clank; bright blue optics stared at him levelly. They had never met before until this day, but there was an impression of companionship in the gaze that made him feel oddly safe. "Sense?" the robot named Atom asked quietly.

Noise didn't reply, his optics dimming. He nodded in silence, and it was enough.

"Welcome back from deactivation, Noisy Boy. . ."—Atom continued, and his expression flashed in mock admonishment as he shook his helm—"Seven hundred, ninety-one years sure is a long time to be sleeping, don't you think?"

* * *

><p><em>Tbc.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** And we get a look into Noisy Boy's past and how he came to be! (He's called 'Noise' in here, because I like it better than 'Noisy' or 'Noisy Boy' |8)  
>I made most of it up, so I'm not sure if it's accurate or not.<p>

Hope this (especially the beginning part when Noise re-experiences his memory/dream) wasn't _too_ confusing; it's supposed to be vague like that, but people tell me I'm way too unclear sometimes, so just give a shout if you didn't get something C: Also, I know the copious amount of detail is _killing_ you guys (dw, it's killing me too XD), but that's just my writing style for the fic, this chapter especially, so forgive me! There shall be some action soon (if I'm able to continue. . .), but I'm just building up character right now so it's going a bit slow.

I apologize for the immense cursing and slight violence in this chapter-~- I might change the rating to M in the future, because it _will_ eventually get more violent.  
>Also, can you guys guess what year it is now? :3<p> 


End file.
